Karen Pence is a painter

Yes, Indiana’s First Lady Karen Pence likes to paint. Pence told the Indy Star that she studied art at Butler, where she majored in teaching and minored in art. “I thought, gosh, ‘I’d like to learn more about art.’ I pulled it out of the air.” She graduated with BA and MA degrees in elementary education, taught art in Indiana grammar schools for many years, and sold her paintings at local art fairs.

Karen Pence with her paintings at the Indiana State Fair.

According to the Indy Star:

When they had their first child, Karen decided to take a class in watercolors. “I told Mike I need a night when you’re in charge and I just go have fun,” she said. “Then what happened was, I realized, I can paint.” Her mother-in-law asked her to paint the lake house. A sister commissioned her to do her house. The idea for a business was planted. Watercolors, which dry quickly, suited the mother of three young children. “You can paint while they’re napping,” she said.

This past April, she presented a series of watercolor prints at the Indiana Arts Building on the Indiana State Fairgrounds as part of Indiana’s bicentennial celebration.

August 05, 2016 (Indiana State Fair, Indianapolis, Indiana) – Governor Mike Pence and First Lady Karen Pence with Jean Smith, first place winner of the Indiana State Fair Watercolors Division. (image via www.In.gov)

Pence is married to Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s ultra-conservative running mate. Judging from the type of paintings Pence herself makes and her Foundation’s choice of grant recipients, I think it’s safe to say that their ideas about art are deeply traditional.

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Be strong Karen , it would seem art, may or may not be for you …I think Art, being creative, is has very lttle to with ambition or money, its a thing from the heart, ..We must leave the heady life things for the big girls and boys, The real creators are always being called upon, I do hope , and kinda guessing you know where I am coming from….Happiness Gary

Brain surgery is very difficult. Watercolor technique is not that difficult a medium and I speak as someone who paints in it (and oil) and has taught it to well over 1000 students over nearly 30 years. What is difficult is originality. Ms Pence is competent at a basic technical level but her work is safe, pedestrian and impersonal. Originality requires a willingness to take risks and/ or to invest a deeper personal investigation into the process. (One problem with this work is that a photo with a simple watercolor filter applied digitally would look pretty close to this work.) I am happy she is finding satisfaction in her hobby but the only novelty here is that she will be doing it while married to the VP. If she uses her new position to promote the Fine Arts, I will respect her interest more. And since you linked Mr. Brand’s possible work to his authority to speak to this article, I attach a website of my work.

Re: her support of the arts. I don’t think you have much to worry about. From cosmopolitan-dot-com:
“She formed the Indiana First Lady’s Charitable Foundation in 2013 to promote individuals and organizations that encourage children, families, and the arts, the IndyStar reports. The foundation offers grants and scholarships to these individuals and organizations, and the foundation first benefited Riley’s Art Therapy Initiative, an art therapy program for hospitalized children.”

This is what’s so wonderful about Art…beauty is in the eye of the beholder. While the above commenter’s personal website showed some interesting art, and I personally love color…I found the subject matter & color to be reminiscent of carnival hawkers, circuses, and the like. The busy-ness of most of the paintings made the eye wander to the point where I had to look away to have a pause…similar to clearing the palate of overly rich food, without being able to take it in at one time. The overuse of primary colors were also rather, elementary. Very interesting work…but over done and visually hectic, especially with the borders. With today’s technology, artwork can be digitally copied with precision, so no surprise there. With technology today, we can hardly believe our own eyes anymore. While some people like muted hues, others like bright, and some like traditional and others prefer like the above…a reminder of the work of Charles Wysocki. Thankfully, we can all choose exactly what we like!

What a thoughtful response;immediately inspiring to all who try the awful, intimidating act of being truthful to one’s self and not illustrating a digital image or someone’s response to deeper thoughts or scenes………….Thank you! Barbara Kerstetter

Artists should be very concerned about the authoritarian, anti-democratic Trump/Pence regime that is about to take over the US government. Remember how the Nazis called modern art “degenerate” and banned it on the grounds that it was un-German? Artists were sanctioned and their work was censored. The frighteningly corrupt Trump/Pence govt. seems poised for similar measures. Dissent will not be tolerated– they have already blocked the Million Woman March that was scheduled to take place in DC the day after the inauguration.

Anonymous has got it right. The former Bush president is painting too but these paintings by Mrs. Pence represent a fledging attempt at mastering (watercolor, oil painting, acrylic painting) with attempts at photographic representation. I takes awhile. I know a lot of former students etc. who paint, have shows and the like: kudos for them and their work does speak for itself and Mrs. Pence’s work does.

When you consider that Trump, Putin, and Pence lost the popular vote, it seems likely that protests will continue throughout their (let’s call it what it is) reign. Will arts organizations that present artists and exhibitions critical of TPP policies be defunded? We may all end up drooling in a corner, painting meaningless house portraits, and having pathetic shows in the glass cases at the state agricultural fairs.

I adore Mrs. Pence’s art work and we all should encourage anyone with the courage to paint. “If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” If you do not like her artwork-then do not look at it-I for one LOVE IT!!!

Does something as lovely as watercolor painting by Karen Penske have to be denegrated by some people? She is educated, taught children and took up a unique interest; painting; so what if she depicts houses??? I hand fabricate jewelry, design , fabricate, make bezels and set stones, I recently stated botanical paintings??? Would you cruel art judges consider my endeavors worthy of creative art? Her husband is the “tag along VP” with President Trump. Why not value Karen’s contribution to children as a teacher… I am a teacher, elementary, too… a value contribution to society!

Sure, I’ll comment, Shawn. No, I don’t need to “…rant.” You don’t need to hurl epithets, just be proper and ask a question. Let’s see. Pence and Trump tried to deny 26,000,000 American families their healthcare insurance. Yup. Take it away. Do you watch the news, Shawn? And as for passing ANY legislation concerning a (1) jobs bill, (2) budget bill, (3) infrastructure bill, (3) debt ceiling, (4) tax reform, (5) immigration reform, (6) education/school funding, etc… there is nothing. Zero. Trump has taken more vacation by any President at this time, and spent more in one month, than President Obama did in a year. This after insulting our allies, attacking his own party, firing so much of his own staff… and threatening judges, his own AG, and multiple Generals. Under 5 criminal investigations, including “obstruction of justice, colluding with an enemy state, serial lying, involved in a cover-up of treasonous activities, and trying to usurp an ongoing Special Prosecutor who is trying to find out how many of Trump’s family, Cabinet, campaign officials were involved in espionage with Russia. That doesn’t even go into the President ending “video” of the WH Press Conferences, refusing to explain his hundreds of lies (See: Washington Post’s interactive page: “100 Days of Trump Claims,”) and his war on the Press –– who is only trying to figure out what he’s up to, as he hasn’t given a Press Conference (where he answers questions) in months. A White House hiding from the public, and humiliated daily… with so many lies by the President. It is the worst I’ve ever seen. And I’m almost 60. This “dismantling of democracy” with Trump gutting decades-old protocols and procedures that have kept this nation strong… is worth noting. But folks such as you, who are “cult-like” followers of this man, who has accomplished zero in his 7 months in office, is the scary thing. You don’t mind Trump’s lies. You don’t mind his gargantuan lack of knowledge of remedial policy. You laugh when he makes a gaffe that underscores he knows nothing, (See recent transcripts of phone calls with the Mexican President Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Turnbull). My god, this is not a joke. America is dying here.

Sensible Thinker, well said. I do enough FB ranting about Donnie and Mikey for both of us (and probably several others).
If you thought things were bad in August, well, just look what’s happened since then.

“I am not surprised by President Donald Trump’s antics this week. Not by the big splashy pronouncements such as announcing a wall that he would force Mexico to pay for, even as the Mexican foreign minister held talks with American officials in Washington. Not by the quiet, but no less dangerous bureaucratic orders, such as kicking the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff out of meetings of the Principals’ Committee, the senior foreign-policy decision-making group below the president, while inserting his chief ideologist, Steve Bannon, into them. Many conservative foreign-policy and national-security experts saw the dangers last spring and summer, which is why we signed letters denouncing not Trump’s policies but his temperament; not his program but his character.

“We were right. And friends who urged us to tone it down, to make our peace with him, to stop saying as loudly as we could “this is abnormal,” to accommodate him, to show loyalty to the Republican Party, to think that he and his advisers could be tamed, were wrong. In an epic week beginning with a dark and divisive inaugural speech, extraordinary attacks on a free press, a visit to the CIA that dishonored a monument to anonymous heroes who paid the ultimate price, and now an attempt to ban selected groups of Muslims (including interpreters who served with our forces in Iraq and those with green cards, though not those from countries with Trump hotels, or from really indispensable states like Saudi Arabia), he has lived down to expectations.

“Precisely because the problem is one of temperament and character, it will not get better. It will get worse, as power intoxicates Trump and those around him. It will probably end in calamity—substantial domestic protest and violence, a breakdown of international economic relationships, the collapse of major alliances, or perhaps one or more new wars (even with China) on top of the ones we already have. It will not be surprising in the slightest if his term ends not in four or in eight years, but sooner, with impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment. The sooner Americans get used to these likelihoods, the better….”

I find it awful when one artist bashes another artists work…Isn’t art supposed to be about expressing oneself in what ever form feels good to that artist? Her artwork does not have any thing to do about politics. I voted for Hillary but I don’t like to see mean spirited comments about any persons artwork. Whether a creative person is a Republican, Democrat, Independent or no party designated…We artists need to support one another, not bring each other down.

We support one another by critiquing. The people who like Ms. Pence’s work are free to like it. Those of us who find it a little bit
deathly are just as viable as the people who find it enlivening. This is a discussion. Let’s keep talking to each other. A little courtesy can go a long way.

Some of you are so mean spirited, or “elitist artistes”, or bringing politics into a venue where it does not belong. Mrs. Pence is a pretty special person, a pretty special watercolorist, and I would congratulate her work–especially her latest work which she contributed to her current home, the VP mansion at the Naval Observatory. Thanks!
PS) I voted in primary for Bernie, and for Hillary, so not a GOP fan in particular — but we’re ALL Americans with talents…let’s let our talents and tolerances prevail!

There seem to be an awful lot of art snobs here. What they don’t seem to understand is that art is a very personal thing. If it pleases the artist, that’s basically the essence of art and all that is needed. If it also pleases others, that’s even better, though not essential.

I can stand Trump, Pence, and the whole disgusting Republican party, so that’s not the basis of my rant here. I just think that if Ms. Pence likes her own art, and other people like her art, then that’s all that matters, and those who don’t like it can go suck lemons.

Well I’m no republican, and I think Pence might actually be worse than Trump — well probably not — but anyway I think her watercolors are very nice, certainly better than I could do, and good for her for having a hobby she enjoys and becoming accomplished at it. Kudos Mrs. Pence!

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